Thursday, June 13, 2013

The above is a Draw String Bag and what you are going to read is its story!

In 2007, Sangeeta got involved in a Green Initiative called "Show We Care" in SAP GD. They got allotted a budget, volunteers were called and Sangeeta joined the team and brainstormed multiple ideas.

One of the ideas Sangeeta conceptualised was this nice solid cloth bag with the following written on it ( by a creative guy from their marketing team ).

Plastic is Harmful! - Look what it did to Michael Jackson.

Every employee was handed one and were asked to use this instead of plastic packets ( Bangalore had not banned plastic bags yet - ban came in 2011 I guess ). Sangeeta brought one home and I took a liking to it.

While I loved the bag ( perfect for going shopping on a bike ), I hated the Michael Jackson reference - because I respected him a lot and also after a few months he died. I always wore the bag in such a way that words are not facing the world.

Also in 2007, "Show We Care" arranged for a Tree planting drive in SJR Redwoods Apartment Complex in Sarjapur Road. I accompanied Sangeeta on a fine Saturday morning and helped plant trees around the compound wall - around 100 of them. Store this in your register for a while - will revisit this.

Today, in June 2013, I took it for my morning run - and still the bag is in perfect condition and the Michael Jackson words are still intact unfortunately.

Wondering where the story is? Patience my friend - coming to that.

In 2008 - a year after the Show we care Initiative - we were in the process of launching ApartmentADDA. Towards that we wanted a logo and a website. Sangeeta called the Creative guy who designed the Draw String bag. He connected us to the Digital Media company - Cicada Media in Koramangala who printed the nice bag. Also we thought showing her SAP credentials we can get a discount! She even carried the Draw String bag to show it to them for the first meeting.

We went to Cicada Media one fine morning and met Mr.Deviah - its founder. He saw what we had created and liked it. His team created our first logo and our website design. He introduced us in 2 places.

He was part of the earlier committees where he lived - in Greenwood Regency, Sarjapur Road - and introduced us to the Management Committee there. Their treasurer saw the potential and signed the cheque and they became our first paying customer. Allelujah! Mr.Deviah was also part of the core committee of another property still under construction in Whitefield and introduced us there too. They started using us, but will turn paying customers much later.

One of the members, who later became President, had a brother in a landmark Villa community in Whitefield. He gave us a call and invited us for a demo, we went there on a Saturday and after a nerve wracking demo + wait - they signed us up and also paid for 3 years upfront - it was like seed money for us!

The initial few customers all came to us because of one person. Sangeeta and I were just 2 years into Bangalore and our network was very limited. We were really fortunate for the initial breaks we got.

Taking a step back - had Sangeeta not volunteered for the "Show We Care" project and the draw string bag not been conceptualized - ApartmentADDA might have still happened - but we would have gone to any of the web design firms and would not have got the opportunity to meet Cicada's founder.

Remember the tree planting drive we did. In 2009 December we organized our first Workshop - on Conserving Water in association with Biome - the Water Experts. We were bootstrapped and revenues were just trickling in. We were burning our Fixed Deposits to keep ApartmentADDA running. We needed a hall - and you don't get anything less than Rs.5000. Subha from Biome's team, happened to live in SJR Redwoods and she talked to their Management Committee, who allowed the usage of their party hall for just Rs.500.

Coincidence? Or it was the good Karma paying us back what we had earned in 2007 - planting trees in SJR Redwood.

Steve Jobs in his famous Graduation Ceremony speech talks of Connecting the Dots. We can always look back and figure out how it all worked out. But we simply cannot plan these connections. It all happens by itself.

Sangeeta could not have foreseen that some day her hubby will quit job and start a website - which will be a tool for Management Committees - so let me get involved in this Green Initiative - and that company that printed the cloth bags - their owner - has experienced the pains of being in the Management Committee......and so on - you get the drift.

Fast forward a few years -This Saturday, June 15th 2013, we are organising an open house on Self Sufficient Apartment Communities - we believe we are doing the right thing - bringing eco warriors and the eco apprentices together under one roof. We are helping spread the eco-virus :)

Some day somewhere down the line - it will all get connected. We are just laying the dots.

Sunday, June 09, 2013

Once gizmos run out of warranty I get excited. Time to try out a few things it was not originally designed for ( definition of hacking )

My Early 2011, Mac Book Pro (MBP) 13" is soon turning 2 years. And it was getting slow. Painfully slow. [ Tried Taming Lion but was not enough ]

Meanwhile I was slowly burning in envy ( envy is good. jealousy is bad :) ) - looking at @sanban's Mac Book Air (MBA) - which was so light and ran amazingly fast. All thanks to the SSD - Solid State Drive in it vs the HDD - Hard Disk Drive on my MBP.

Twitterverse advised me to upgrade to SSD. Spoke to @b_hari who advised me - its a no brainer. And you won't regret it - the difference is humungous.

I did a search on the local flipkart and ebay.in but could not find any SSDs. This was some 6 months back I guess.

A few days back I was planning to do a re-install - things had gone painfully slow. This time I went to ebay.in and searched for SSDs and got a few hits.

There were lot of options and I zeroed in on Samsung 840 SSD ( 250GB ). There was a Pro but more expensive. I snagged the non-Pro 840 SSD at Rs.11,500. Took 4 days to reach - felt like I was back in US ordering stuff from newegg!

Here are the steps. Took 4 hours end to end - to get the same setup back on SSD.

1. Moved music and other unnecessary files to the external Hard Disk - have to now fit things from a 3BHK into a 2BHK.

2. Took a time machine backup to an external hard disk. What a time saver this time machine backup was.

3. Burnt the Mountain Lion Installation file to a 8GB USB Stick.

4. Bought a 31 in 1 Screw kit, Chinese made from a fancy store for Rs.110. The DiY blogs,youtube videos specify some Philips Screw Driver, Torc screw driver etc - good luck finding those in India. This Chinese one had it all.

5. All set. Popped open the bottom lid. Tried removing the battery connector ( some of the youtube videos advised doing this ) - but the connector was not coming out - decided not to do something stupid by damaging the connector. So let it stay there.

The Hard disk drive came out easily. The SATA connector also did not give any problems.

6. I spent some time admiring at a cool piece of technology in the MBP - which is now getting obsolete. The HDD rests on a sensor - and when the laptop is moved fast or is dropped - it detects the fall and stops the HDD's needle from touching the spindle - this prevents any bad sectors / physical damages to the hard disk. You would hear a small cracking noise whenever the motion detection happened. But with SSD there are no movable parts and this piece of hardware is not needed anymore.

7. Then fitted the SSD, bolted it nicely. Put the lid back ( didnt screw it ) and powered the laptop. Heard the Apple chime and the screen just froze white for an eternity. I had a mild panick attack - but then a folder with a question mark showed up. Phoo - thats good. The SSD is windows formatted so it was not detected.

8. Now I put the screws back - thanked the Chinese Screw driver. Plugged in the 8GB USB stick.

10. Continued with the installation ( remember to make a username which is different from the one you used to have. Time machine when it tries to restore it will ask for a different username if its already taken ). I made this mistake ( not a big deal though )

11. Once installation was over, connected my external Hard drive, chose Migration Assistant and restored from the Time Machine backup. Forums recommend Carbon Copy Cloner - not needed if you have a Time machine backup.

12. A few things I had to do from what I gathered from the forums.

a. Installed TrimEnabler - this will optimize the writes and will not spoil the SSD ( ahemm. I never really understood the whole file storage and sector concept)

b. Turned off the Hard drive motion sensor - can be disabled from command line.

c. Turned off Last Access time for file - seems the OS will thrash the SSD a lot. Again a command line setting.

You can google for these. Simple ones.

13. Finally it was done. All the Mail was restored, all applications ( except Microsoft Office which had to be activated once again ), settings, wallpaper - just like before. And it is blazing fast. If you are drooling at the new Retina MBPs or planning to get an MBA - try out the SSD route - for lot less you can breathe another couple of years into your favorite MBP.

I dont see any difference in weight. Its still heavy. I didnt see any significant change in Battery life.

Next : Have to install Windows 7 and Ubuntu. The rEFIt bootloader I had put is still intact ( actually I was worried if I would run into problems because of this - searched in forums if anyone having rEFIt had done SSD swap - could not find any - but thankfully it all went smooth ).

After a couple of months - will either put one more SSD inplace of the DVD Drive ( another piece of technology fast becoming obsolete ) - or remove the DVD Drive itself to reduce the weight a bit.

And friends - if anyone needs any help on how to swap an SSD sitting in India with all parts procured locally - now you know who to talk to!